It’s strange that Mayor McQuisten highlights Jake Brown and Ken Hackett as “leaders” of Baker County United (BCU). BCU began on my patio last year — it started with the three of us and Carrie Matthews. There are no leaders in BCU. We are patriotic people who strive to live by the golden rule. We are primarily a community service organization. BCU has not, and does not, publicly endorse any candidate.

I was appointed to the Baker City Council budget board by a previous council, and I met McQuisten after she was elected to council, so I called her to ask about the county’s Republican committee. I was excited that she might share the same political goals, and I wanted to talk to her about them. After three calls over a week, wherein I left messages asking her to call me back, she instead sent me a text telling me not to call the number anymore. I stopped. Then I found out that she had played my messages for Jonathan Cannon, the city manager, in an effort to have me removed from the budget board. I called Mr. Cannon and explained that my medical condition sometimes makes speech difficult for me. He apologized and sent an email to all of the councilors explaining my condition. Instead of apologizing, McQuisten further defamed me by replying to Cannon and the council — calling my messages “bizarre and creepy, at best.” Soon after, she voted against highly qualified volunteers who wanted to serve on council. This kept the council votes a 3-3 tie. Council took months to resolve this while McQuisten traveled the state hoping to be governor. She even tried to “deputize” her cohort, Councilor Joanna Dixon, to be vice mayor in her absence.

BCU never “targeted” McQuisten’s mother, nor did we “target” McQuisten. We decided that if the Baker County Republican Central Committee (BCRCC) wasn’t going to host candidates for all offices, then we would try. BCU is not behind the effort to recall anyone. BCU never attempted to “overthrow” anything nor anyone. BCU has not “talked” about purging BCRCC. What BCRCC does is their business, not BCU’s.

Why does McQuisten blatantly lie about BCU?

I started my political life making calls for Gerald Ford. I campaigned and voted for Reagan twice while McQuisten inflated balloons. I interned for Pete Wilson in Washington, D.C., when he was in the U.S. Senate. After graduating from Stanford, I lived and worked in Japan for two years in the legal department of Alps Electric Co., Ltd. I moved to Baker City in 2007, following my father who moved to Halfway in the early 1990s. I love this county and my country.

Since BCU hosted a number of other gubernatorial candidates, BCU invited McQuisten to meetings and asked her to speak. She declined and instead smeared BCU as “antifa” and a “mob.” Regardless, the invitation stands: Mayor McQuisten, please join us to help elect honest, patriotic candidates this November.

Jason Bland

Baker City